


Untill the Stars Fall From the Sky

by FromAnonymousToZ



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: A little meandering tale, Enoch's lament, I dont know what to tag., I'll be frank, Is it a slow burn if it stretches way over 400 years and they still dont get together?, M/M, Slow Burn, Told at length
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 13:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21282635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromAnonymousToZ/pseuds/FromAnonymousToZ
Summary: Enoch Barns was an old death god wearing a young skin. Death gods came and death gods passed, some took on new mantles as the gained or fell from popularity, they were remarkably common worshipped by all cultures as a single similarity in all life. But Enoch was an old god.
Relationships: The Beast/Enoch (Over the Garden Wall)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 49





	Untill the Stars Fall From the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this was supposed to be written and published on Halloween, the archive wouldn't let me post for some reason. Also, no I do not know where this story came from, it started out as a different story entirely, one that wasn't even about Enoch and the Beast.

Enoch Barns was an old death god wearing a young skin. Death gods came and death gods passed, some took on new mantles as the gained or fell from popularity, they were remarkably common worshipped by all cultures as a single similarity in all life. But Enoch was an old god. 

It was hundreds of thousands of years ago he had first awakened as he hung over the land with the taste of death in his mouth. He was as old as the grave, the very first of them. He wasn't a well beloved or worshipped god, he wasn't seen as death, that job belonged to a charming fellow who didn't quite deserve the descriptor Grim in his name. 

Never had men quaked before him or fallen to their knees in worship. Not a single ounce of blood had ever been shed in his name. He had never quite fallen out of favor because he had never truly been in favor in the first place. Their worship was merely an understanding, a simple acknowledgement of him that would serve more than a single prayer ever would.

He trailed across the earth leaving trails of death in his wake, sometimes he took physical forms, sometimes he drifted without form.

But he often took a body and would court the fae, the eldrich, the magical, the mystical, for though their lives were fleeting, they would far outpace a mortal’s life.

Enoch had been around for a long time he had seen all manner of gods and fae fall, even those who were thought to be immortal eventually succumbed to him.

The man with the silver antlers hasn't died yet though. 

He wears many skins like Enoch. But after 4 centuries of courting the man still hasn't died, not truly. 

Enoch has never had something that lives as long as him. Even the dead pass on eventually. He has courted all manner of gods and deities, he has loved, but he knows everyday that they may pass on, without a true death because they have no true soul. The creature is stubborn, it claims to have lived for eons and will live further that even he. 

Enoch is not so sure.

What could come after death after all?

The man wears a human skin for the first decade or so, it is ill fitting. The creature is taller than the skin, bigger than the body. The skin stretches taught and the man seems to spill over the body. Not like Enoch, any body that he took he could leave bits of himself outside if it did not fit. This creature cannot.

And it’s antlers split it’s head open. 

Silver and proud like that of a stag.

None of the mortals seem to notice so Enoch supposes it must not be obvious through their eyes. But he can see them. He can see them oh so clearly. They treat him like one of their own and he lures them into his forest. 

Their souls never come to Enoch, but he can feel echoes of them, traces of them on his companion. 

For the second hundred years the man wears a skin that fits him nearly as badly as the first, but instead of being to tight it was too large for him. It ripples and contorts, eyes open and close and fuse together, fur weaves with scales that grow to feathers. Leathery flesh marred with eyes and gaping maws. Sharp teeth fight against a beak, claws are supplemented by paws and talons. A snout soon replaced with a vicious beak. It tried to fit him within a space larger than he occupied.

But the antlers are still proud and virile.

After 300 years of companionship the creature says he’s grown tired of these mortal skins. He wants his body back.

Enoch watches him shed the skin. Step from a form that fit him poorly and into a skin that was truly his. 

They sit in Enoch’s then home, when the writhing flesh falls away as a figure pulls itself from one of the many mouths of the creature. Head first, claws pulling it out, lovely, dark antlers, like the strong branches of an oak spread out from his head like a crown.

Shoulders that are narrower than a stag’s but broader than a man’s follow a graceful neck. Dark shadows cloak his form, hugging his very being but Enoch can see. The creature is wood, and something more. A thick shag of fur that is neither the creature’s nor any other beast covers him and hangs around stilt like legs. 

Eyes like the palest moon dance with colored rings. 

Enoch swoons, his mortal form fails him.

He finds another body.

He follows his lovely companion for many centuries more, no longer bothering with spirits that do not linger. He courts them no longer, he does not dance as he once did with them, he does not mimic the courtship of mortals with them. Bodies come and bodies go, seasons come and seasons pass, spirits live and spirits die. But they survive.

His companion sings.

A low rumbling voice that trembles with every note Enoch has ever heard. 

Enoch sings with him.

They sing together. 

They dance.

It takes many years to dance together.

Enoch wears a cat skin the first evening they dance together, and it's a strange whirling chasing dance, but a dance nonetheless. 

He wears a maypole next time and dwarfs his companion. They swirl, they twirl, they dance, Enoch entraps him within green ribbons and he escapes.

One night when he wears a raven skin he lands upon the creature’s antlers. His claws grip wood and sink slightly into shadow but his companion does not bid him away and simply hums in acknowledgement. 

And so he rests upon the antlers of a winter spirit and he folds against himself three sets of wings, and he thinks himself so lucky to be allowed to sit on the crown of a king.

For that is what his companion’s antlers are.

A crown.

A symbol of pride, of strength, they are a testament to the danger he poses. 

They wreath his companion’s head like thorns in a crown.

They frame the face of winter in a forest as it should be. 

They spread wide and crown winter’s king in a coronation that only the silk spinner, the corpse, the queen, the lady, and the sparrows had been privy to.

His companion calls him many things. 

Harvest lord, death god, autumn walker, god of many skins, names to countless to name. Merely titles, words, nothing so critical as a_ name _.

But on that evening when he calls him harvest lord, and it is an endearment.

Enoch calls his companion many things. 

The voice of the night, the death of hope, hope eater, the antlered one, the beast of eternal darkness. Names, from here and there, some that mortals named his companions, others that Enoch coined himself.

When Enoch says them, they are all endearments. 

“I gave myself a name long ago.” Enoch says one eve in the woods when he wears a serpent skin;. He’s never much cared for this skin, far too few limbs, he thinks again of his maypole skin, he recalls fondly ensnaring his companion who had been unable to tear free of his bonds on more than one occasion. Perhaps it is a form he should revisit that form in some point in the next few centuries. 

His companion looks to him in surprise and he supplements an answer. 

“Enoch.” He says simply and his companions surprised expression gives way to a thoughtful hum. 

“A fine name for a death god. One that rings not with death.” HIs companion says finally and Enoch can barely suppress a hissing laugh as his companion speaks again. “It is a name that mortals have perverted. Yet it still rings without death.”

“A name I chose though, and you my friend? Have you named yourself.”

“I have been named. I have never taken upon myself a name.” Enoch coils lazily upon his companions leg humming a distracted tune. His companion shakes him off his leg and gazes up at the moon. 

“You have been named by mortals?” Enoch asks slowly.

“Beast. That is what they call me.” 

“Isn’t ironic, I, not a creature of worship, merely in the habit of being worshiped, named myself you-” 

“A creature not in the habit of being worshiped, merely in the habit of being, named by the very mortals I despise.” His companion finishes and that night of it they speak no more.

Enoch inhabits a human body once more in the next life. He locks away the world from within a corn farm. 

He eats the vegetable not, stripping the corn of it’s silk and casting away the cobs. Deft hands, worn with callouses like thick leather weave strand after strand. He makes a new skin, locked away in a barn, toiling in the wee hours of the morning. 

It does not take long. A mere seven decades or so but when he has finished he knows he has more than out worn his welcome in this body. He leaves the mortal body and it crumples as if he had been the only thing holding it upright. 

He echoes through this form he has woven for himself. Dexterous ribbons ripple out, twisting and snaring and curling. 

He feels his companion just outside the house, each step echoing closer. His companion knows something has changed. 

They have not spoken in many decades, but that is fine. Decades can do little to friendships built on a millennia. 

The barn doors creak open with a breath of winter wind. Fluttering snowflakes, errant and looking for a home, breeze in and flit to the ground.

A shadowy figure slips through the crack in the door and cold eyes gaze on his new form slumped against the wall of the barn.

Enoch hasn't seen if this body can support itself yet on simple green ribbons. He leans against the wall, his head tilted at a lifeless angle, ribbons curling and testing close to his core. When Enoch gazes upon his companion all thought of testing his body and checking it are gone.

He holds the illusion still of checking that every ribbon curls to his desire as a pale green ribbon sneaks through the shadows, aiming to grab his companion’s ankle and drag his companion to his new form where he can properly get acquainted with both his new form and his companion’s form.

He doesn't notice his companion lifting his foot but when the foot slams down on his wandering tendril stopping the squirming thing in its exploration his great head snaps up.

“You think I would be so easily trapped? You’ve grown soft harvest lord.” 

Enoch’s likes to think he keeps his eldritch side well contained. 

He’s never said this was one of the moments he kept well contained. 

Ribbons shot forward, lethal speeds, unevadable. A stitched smile splits to make way for an ever shifting wet maw of sharp teeth, a sharp grinning Cheshire smile. 

His companion leaps nimble out of the way of the ribbons, furs billowing up and rippling. Enoch had expected the swift movement, and his ribbons were faster. A dark green ribbon shoots out and coils around his companions chest, yanking his companion across the room.

Fabric face meets shadow doused face. Cold eyes meet stitched eyes. Enoch’s snapping eldritch maw, writhes with far to many needle like teeth. A long curling tongue darts from his mouth flickering to brush over the shadows of his companion’s mouth, feeling the shape of it, the snarl upon it.

After a long moment Enoch withdraws his tongue and with great effort pulls closed the ripped fabric of his mouth, it stitches itself together and soon it is as if it was never there in the first place.

Enoch settles down from where he leaned forward, ribbons coiling and twisting. 

His companion gives no complaint as the great maypole leans back relishing the stiff surprised form of the Beast trapped within his coils. 

Enoch is in love. 

But the mating dance of immortals is long.

Enoch has waited decades and is ready to wait decades still.

It occurs to him after one particular conversation on the merits of mortals and their worship that perhaps it is only he doing this courting song and dance. 

He wonders if his companion has any idea what Enoch is after.

Enoch himself does not know exactly what he’s after. 

He is not a sexual creature. 

He is sure he could find some way to bring a more carnal pleasure to his companion, but it is not his end goal.

Mortals of all breeds and furs and feathers seemed to find something in companionship, Enoch knows that he is a social creature but that does not explain why this is so different. 

He spent many years, courting many spirits.

He has never found one quite like the Beast. 

But he knows there is something more to wanting to spend time with his companion than simply enjoying company. There is a deep, carnal, urge. To mark, to claim, to maim and keep. 

After a handful of hundred years he think he has it worked out. At first he believes it has to do with death craving life, but after a few dozen years he banishes the thought, he craves not for any other creature’s life. 

Autumn then, wishes to devour winter. But once more the thought is thrown out, for should it not be winter devouring the last fringes of autumn.

After many, many years he finally decides, he simply likes the Beast.

It is much easier when he doesn't try to pry any deeper answers and simply takes the facts at face value.

Nubile ribbons are a good deal more interesting to explore with.

Enoch has traced his companion’s body with paws, claws, hands, the scales of his stomach, the fur of his flanks, some days he is shaken off easily, other days his companion tolerates his touch.

His companion allows gently probing explorations so long as they don't poke beneath the furs of his ‘cloak’ and keep far away from his antlers. Enoch figures it will be acceptable to poke around in the wooded tunnels that make up his companion's wooden figure. 

He only gets one ribbon an inch in before a dark clawed hand snaps closed around the ribbon and freezes it’s squirming exploration.

“No.” The short word makes Enoch’s great head tilts in curiosity.

“Why lord of the wastes? Is there something you’d rather me not find within? A beating heart perhaps?” Enoch teases only to be scoffed at. 

“Merely tunnels of wood harvest lord, and I’d rather you not get tangled up inside me.”

And of it they speak no more but Enoch locks it away in his heart and ponders it.

Enoch is a great creature. A creature of many skins and there are parts of him, old forgotten parts, parts even he has forgotten that dwell deep within the earth and _ ache _. 

Parts of him he has forgotten or hidden that wish to writhe up to the surface. That lash out and coil, and finally entrap Enoch’s companion, to explore deep within the wooded form to memorize his companion within and without, to get lost within his companion. 

But he resists the urge. 

He silences the parts of him deep within the earth, hushing himself with promises of years to come, assuring these wicked twisted parts of him that his companion does indeed belong to him.

Ownership is something Enoch has had a difficult relationship with over the years. 

For a very long time the only thing he desired were companions, and as a lord of death everything, eventually, ended up with him, it did not always stay, but most things that came to him came to him with every intention of staying, and by the time it was gone Enoch had usually moved on from it. 

Then there came a part of him that wanted the moon in his feelers, and the stars at his whim, a song on his lips. It was odd to be denied something after so long of never being denied but he found eventually that even stars died, even songs were forgotten, even moons fell from the skies eventually. 

And so he learned to be patient. 

Not all things might belong to him now, but if he waited, even the world would be his. 

He grew old.

He grew patient. 

And he would wait until every star had died in the skies, until every tree withered upon the earth, ever fish swam upside down in the sea, if it meant he could have the Beast.


End file.
